Guard my beer
Why not shepherds? Priests? Angels?
America’s newest branch of the military is about to celebrate the end of its first year, and now members of the Space Force will have something to call each other.
Vice President Mike Pence announced on Friday that members will be called “guardians.”
On the one hand it sounds a bit fascist, and on the other hand it sounds soppy. We’re not orphans, we don’t need “guardians.”
“It is my honor on behalf of the president of the United States to announce that henceforth the men and women of the United States Space Force will be known as guardians,” Pence told an audience at the White House. “Soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and guardians will be defending our nation for generations to come.”
See it doesn’t fit. The other four are simple, descriptive, direct. (“Airmen” obviously needs work but at least it’s not fanciful.) “Guardians” is marketing-speak, it’s a public relations word, it’s touchy-feely, it’s soppy.
No, that doesn’t apply to the newspaper of the same name, because it used to have Manchester in front, which is the opposite of soppy.
I look forward to Marvel suing the US Government over trademark infringement.
Well that’s definitely going into Space Force season 2 (I like it, don’t hate me).
Maybe Pence should have crowd-sourced it. Spacey McSpacemen? How about “storm troopers”?
Hard to come up with anything that isn’t risible. Spaceforce men, space warriors, space fighters, planet rangers, astro rangers, rocket men…
I hope that Biden will just put an end to the silly idea. Then we can call it defunct, disbanded, former, ex-…
Should be space marines or starship troopers…
I am Groot.
Honestly, “Orbiters” would’ve been the way to go, if there were an adult in the room.
Freemage, adults are an endangered species in the Trump administration. I sometimes worry they are an endangered species throughout the country.
Haven’t they watched Star Trek? The space service adopted naval traditions.
What about space cadets?
Their logo looks rather Star Trek influenced.
Apparently there was a proposal to require the Space Force to use naval ranks, but the decision was to allow the branch to choose its own ranks and the term for members. I have not seen the rank structure yet. The branch was carved out of the Air Force, which used to be responsible for space operations, and I have seen some articles suggesting an Air Force style rank system.
Army soldiers use a slang term “grunt” for the people who do the dirty work; perhaps the Space Force guardians will adopt the slang “groot”.
How many of these “guardians” will actually go into space at all? Any of them?
From this page, which looks totally awesome in a painted-on-a-van way, but could do with fewer fonts:
https://www.spaceforce.mil/About-Us/About-Space-Force/Mission/
Trump, in his adolescent brain, might imagine that this means people on spaceships pew-pewing at each other in space. But not only is that preposterous, and impossible given our current technology, it’s not even in the mission statement. These “guardians” are, to a groot, desk jockeys. The only real jobs for them will be in R&D and logistics. At the very most, some day one of them might fly a drone that pew-pews in space.
Let’s scratch “Guardians” and dub them “Desk Jockeys.” Much funnier.
Surely, ‘spacers’, as many a sc-fi book has put it?
bascule
Well, yeah.
The whole Space Force thing is product marketing. A PR stunt.
And it’s been going on for a long time. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was originally “Operation Infinite Justice”. The Afghans objected on the grounds that only Allah can dispense infinite justice, so the Pentagon obligingly rebranded the war “Operation Enduring Freedom”.
We used to call them Astronauts. That was before the lines were blurred between fiction and reality. Militarizing the space program seems like a bad idea. Who are they going to defend against, Klingons? There’s no one out there, dipshits. What a colossal waste of resources.